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Salt Lake looms large in MLS history (its championship-winning 2009 side is the stuff of legend), but it’s long been one of the league’s smallest and lowest-spending markets. This is not, and has never been, a franchise capable of signing Lionel Messi\u00a0<\/a>or Son Heung-min<\/a>. If Salt Lake wants superstars, Salt Lake has to create them itself\u2014and create them it has.<\/p>\n Luna is Salt Lake’s biggest breakthrough yet, and his journey through the team’s taught coach Pablo Mastroeni that consistency, communication and simplicity were necessary to help more young players like him make the first-team jump.<\/p>\n “I think the most important thing is to understand your audience,” Mastroeni said\u00a0<\/a>at the start of the 2026 MLS season. “Knowing that we’re going to have another young group, how do we take sophisticated, complicated tactics and make them as simple for a six-year-old to understand? And I think that’s our challenge, and that’s what we spent a lot of time on in the offseason, really honing as a staff.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Mastroeni streamlined his tactics across all levels of Salt Lake’s teams. If the senior team played one way, the youth team would do the same, and that way, young players had less to learn on the fly as they transitioned between the two.<\/p>\n “It becomes an RSL way,” Mastroeni said<\/a>. “That helps younger players clearly understand expectations, and there shouldn’t be much change when they move up.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n That simplicity makes it possible for the older set of prospects\u2014Luna in particular, who is still just 22\u2014to mentor the younger ones in real time. That’s a boon for Salt Lake’s teenagers, but it’s an even bigger one for Luna. He’s getting the kind of leadership opportunities most players wait a decade to seize.<\/p>\n\n
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